Evictions begin at Victoria hotel being used for homeless sheltering

VICTORIA --
Evictions at the Travelodge on Gorge Road East in Victoria have begun. People are being told to leave so that homeless campers from Pandora Avenue and Topaz Park can be housed.

Now, many say they are facing homelessness as a result.

Eliza Charlie and her husband, Curtis Caziere, have been calling the hotel home since January. Today, they say they are out on the street.

“We have nowhere to go,” said Eliza Charlie. “It’s just not fair.”

They are not the only ones that have now been displaced. Summer McKay and her boyfriend, Jay Clark, are out of the building as well.

“We’ve been told that we’ve been kicked out of here,” said Summer McKay.

On Wednesday, CTV spoke with people that were about to be evicted from the hotel. Claire Mock and her 17-year-old daughter were a couple of those people facing eviction. This morning, she was loading up her car with everything she owns, expecting to sleep in that same car tonight.

Yesterday, B.C. Housing told CTV News that hotels were specifically told not to evict anyone to make room for homeless campers.

Now, B.C. Housing says that it has revised its statement and will work to find paying customers of the hotel, who are now being kicked out, somewhere else to live.

Jay Clark and Summer McKay say that it’s not true from what they are seeing.

“I haven’t heard of anybody. Everyone is [expletive] the same thing, saying the same stuff,” said Clark.

“There’s a bunch of us that got kicked out of here and we’ve be sitting here since 11 a.m.,” said McKay, at roughly 2:30 p.m. that day.

Sentiments among the people that call the hotel home are all the same. Robert Tobler has been paying to live at the hotel since January.

"Giving us two days – we’ve been here for months," he said. "All of a sudden to kick us out and make more people homeless to bring more people in? I don’t get it."

For Mock and her daughter there has been some relief. Later in the day, she received a call from B.C. Housing.

“I’ve got a couple nights grace period here to hang out while B.C. Housing can figure out where my daughter and I can go,” said Mock. “Somewhere that will be safer for us to be.”

It’s good news for them but she worries about the rest of the people that were evicted today that have nowhere to go.

In an effort to house homeless people, many of Mock’s neighbours may now be added to Victoria’s homeless population.